“My business is my own, Sir Royce Severn. Pray leave it at that.”
The other answered him sharply.
“I deny that, Captain Blake; I deny that flatly. It is my business to tell you that Judith Strange is a dangerous woman.”
The path had reached a spot where great oaks were gathered together, casting a half gloom over the grass. Under their canopies the stormy sky showed yellow and red.
Blake stopped dead and faced the man in green.
“I think, sir, you are a little mad—or very insolent.”
“I am neither the one nor the other.”
“You will leave a certain name untouched in my presence.”
He saw two like points of light shine out in the other’s eyes.
“That is the language that all of them have used, Captain Blake. Your good cousin talked like that, sir, though what right he had to mouth such heroics only his own silly conceit could tell. I have heard a great deal of such talk”—he shrugged and laughed—“it never moved me one iota.”